Category Archives: Writing

Notes From Around Town

Posted on October 4, 2012 by PB Rippey

As I idled at a red light, MacArthur Park and Alvarado, a spry, elderly woman entered the crosswalk, head down, waving her arms. She wore a crossing guard’s vest, jeans, running shoes. After she passed my car (of course she … Continue reading →

Posted in Avoiding My Writing, Fiction, Writing, WTF | Tagged 2012, beach, Chango, chaos, Echo Park, Los Angeles, writing | 5 Comments

Note From The Writing House

Posted on October 1, 2012 by PB Rippey

As I write, a fountain bubbles outside remarkable windows. It was bubbling when we arrived. No note was left instructing me to turn it, or the fountain outside the guest bedroom off, and I wasn’t about to go hunting for control panels … Continue reading →

Posted in Avoiding My Writing, books, Children's Books, Fiction, ocean related, Santa Barbara, To Explain, Writer's Angst, Writing, Writing Progress | Tagged 2012, beach, Fountains, Peacocks, poetry, Pottery Barn, preschoolers | 5 Comments

Quote For The Weekend (The Let’s Pretend It’s Still Saturday Edition)

Posted on September 24, 2012 by PB Rippey

Quote potpourri! Quote jambalaya! Quote papier mache! Quote mixed bean salad (with balsamic vinaigrette and BPA-free writing instruments)! There is no need for a writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell what mutton tastes like. It … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotes, Theatre, Writer quotes, Writer's Angst, Writing | Tagged 2012, Antonin Artaud, Dorothy Parker, fiction writing, Ionesco, Maughm, quotes on writing, Thoreau, writing | 3 Comments

Once Upon A Time In Gloomy Oxford

Posted on September 19, 2012 by PB Rippey

1970-something, bookstore, downtown Oxford, England. Cloudy, moody late afternoon (there were so many, which makes the memories of sunny days–sky a blue to gasp over, cottonball clouds, Radcliffe Camera’s dome sunsparked, even musty old Carfax Tower rinsed and bright—stand out all the … Continue reading →

Posted in Children's Books, Fiction, middle grade, Writing | Tagged 2012, Carfax Tower, children's literature, fiction writing, middle grade writing, Oxford, PG Tips!, Radcliffe Camera, Roald Dahl, writing | 2 Comments

The After 9/11/2001 Post

Posted on September 12, 2012 by PB Rippey

Last year I posted this piece on 9/11/11, the crux of which is: One morning, as my boss and I walked across campus after a 9/11 tribute during which she’d read a poem to hundreds gathered at the special ceremony, … Continue reading →

Posted in Santa Barbara, Writer quotes, Writing | Tagged 2012, 9/11/2001, Ground Zero, life, poetry, Santa Barbara, writing | 4 Comments

Coasting From One Weekend Quote To The Next

Posted on September 9, 2012 by PB Rippey

Maybe I’m a writer because I’m desperately trying to clean up my mess. Other people go into therapy or become psychiatrists just to clean up the mess. Well, I couldn’t afford therapy at the time I needed it the most, … Continue reading →

Posted in books, Children's Books, Fiction, Me and Us, To Explain, Writer quotes, Writing, Writing Progress | Tagged 2012, Batcave, cooking, domestic bliss, fiction writing, Isabelle Allende, middle grade writing, Naomi Epel, personal goals, preschoolers, quotes on writing, Wild Krats, writing | 3 Comments

Quote For The Weekend (The “I Totally Forgot” Edition)

Posted on September 3, 2012 by PB Rippey

Finally going to read the book. The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing – rare but profound – remains at the true heart of the enterprise. … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotes, Writer quotes, Writer's Angst, Writing | Tagged 2012, Batcave, Earl Of Oxford, earthquakes, fiction writing, Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Eugenides, La Brea Tar Pits, labradoodles, LACMA, Matt Damon, Michael Fassbender, preschoolers, Pulitzer, Shakespeare, Shame, The Marriage Plot, We Bought A Zoo, writing | 5 Comments

What Beauty Gets You

Posted on August 28, 2012 by PB Rippey

I returned from Big Sur with a line in my head that needed to be inserted into a poem I’m working on. I am lucky the line didn’t leave me, creative synapses firing long and repeatedly enough for me to … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, ocean related, Poetry, Writer's Angst, Writing, Writing Progress, WTF | Tagged 2012, Andrew Molera, beach, Big Sur, earthquakes, fiction, Hearst Castle, middle grade writing, Morro Bay, mule deer, ocean, Pfeiffer Beach, poetry, preschoolers, San Simeon, sea otters, tsunamis, writing | 4 Comments

Quote For The Weekend: Robinson Jeffers (Early Edition)

Posted on August 23, 2012 by PB Rippey

To feel greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural Beauty, is the sole business of poetry. The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas, The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason. —Robinson Jeffers … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, ocean related, Poetry, Writer quotes, Writing | Tagged 2012, beach, Beauty, Big Sur, Carmel, poetry, Robinson Jeffers, Tor House, writing | 6 Comments

Dear Lucky Agent Contest

Posted on August 22, 2012 by PB Rippey

I’m going to enter. Are you? Follow the link below for complete details. Link: Lucky Agent Contest CONTEST DETAILS This contest will be live for approximately 14 days—from Aug. 13, 2012 through the end of Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, PST. … Continue reading →

Posted in Children's Books, Fiction, middle grade, Writing | Tagged 2012, fiction writing, Lucky Agent Contest, middle grade writing, writing, writing contest | 4 Comments

Tribute To Mike deGruy

Posted on August 22, 2012 by PB Rippey

Mike DeGruy loved the ocean. He wrote about it, filmed it, lectured on it (all over the world, to all ages), explored it. He died last February in a helicopter crash, in the midst of doing research for a film … Continue reading →

Posted in fish, ocean related, Santa Barbara, Writing | Tagged 2012, beach, Mike deGruy, Mimi deGruy, ocean, writing | Leave a comment

Quote For The Weekend (Saroyan Edition)

Posted on August 18, 2012 by PB Rippey

How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. . . . If you practice an art … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Writer quotes, Writer's Angst, Writing, Writing Tips | Tagged 2012, English walnuts, fiction writing, quotes on writing, William Saroyan, writer's angst, writing | 5 Comments

Snow White Revisted (Part II)

Posted on August 15, 2012 by PB Rippey

I drove up to Santa Barbara by myself, for a change. High school reunion—the first I’ve ever been to, but not the first my friends have been to and it’s only because of Tdoll and Ddazzle and our nearly life-long … Continue reading →

Posted in Avoiding My Writing, Faction, Fiction, Santa Barbara, Writing, WTF | Tagged 2012, Creekside Inn, fiction, high school reunions, life, middle grade writing, Santa Barbara, snow white | 12 Comments

Snow White Revisited (Part I)

Posted on August 13, 2012 by PB Rippey

And just like that, 2 hours of sitting in traffic was replaced by the type of couch that swallows you in a smooth, nerves-loosening manner, windows looking out on lush greenery, walls hung tastefully in my sister’s collection of California plein air, … Continue reading →

Posted in Faction, Fiction, Poetry, poetry reading, Santa Barbara, Writing | Tagged 2012, fiction writing, ocean, poetry, Santa Barbara, snow white, writing | 7 Comments

Quote For The Weekend (Make Believe Edition–Or IS it)

Posted on August 11, 2012 by PB Rippey

When it was decided (When was that again, and by whom?) that we were all supposed to choose between fiction and nonfiction, what was not taken into account was that for some of us truth can never be an absolute, … Continue reading →

Posted in books, Faction, Fiction, Writer quotes, Writer's Angst, Writing, Writing Tips | Tagged 2012, Contents May Have Shifted, Corn Maze, creative nonfiction, faction, fiction writing, Pam Houston, quotes on writing | 3 Comments

All Heated Up (With Spiders)

Posted on August 9, 2012 by PB Rippey

We are experiencing triple digit weather. Triple digits means hatchings and unwelcome visitors indoors. Cloth-eating moths. Black widows. Giant waterbugs, which I call cockroaches, which my husband insists are waterbugs—regardless, they make the cats crazy in the middle of the night and startle … Continue reading →

Posted in books, Children's Books, Fiction, Me and Us, Writing, WTF | Tagged 2012, black widows, Elizabth Peters, fiction writing, He Shall Thunder In The Sky, heatwaves, life, preschoolers, writing | 10 Comments

Quote For The Weekend (Gore Vidal Edition)

Posted on August 5, 2012 by PB Rippey

You can’t really succeed with a novel anyway; they’re too big. It’s like city planning. You can’t plan a perfect city because there’s too much going on that you can’t take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Writer quotes, Writing, WTF | Tagged 2012, Bunker Hill, Echo Park, fiction writing, Gore Vidal, KCRW, Los Angeles, NPR, poetry, quotes on writing | 5 Comments

Links Time

Posted on August 2, 2012 by PB Rippey

It’s been a week of discovering useful blog links. I’ve hopped from link to link and then some, pausing only to drop the boy off at summer camp, pick him up, play Batman & Dinosaurs, fix dinner, twist myself into … Continue reading →

Posted in Avoiding My Writing, Children's Books, Fiction, middle grade, Writing, Writing Tips | Tagged 2012, Alexandra Sokoloff, Beth Hull, children's literature, creative commons, fiction, middle grade writing, paninis, Pinterest, Pub Rants, public domain, Talia Vance, Veronica Rossi, wikimedia commons, writing, YA Highway, YA Muses | Leave a comment

Quote For The Weekend (Yet Another “Revision” Edition)

Posted on July 29, 2012 by PB Rippey

I work hard, I work very hard. All the books at leat 30 revisions. —Ha Jin In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don’t enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover … Continue reading →

Posted in ocean related, Poetry, Santa Barbara, Writer quotes, Writing | Tagged 2012, beach, children's literature, Ernest Hemingway, fiction, Ha Jin, John Irving, middle grade writing, ocean, poetry, preschoolers, quotes on writing, Rita Dove, T.S. Eliot, Viggo, writing | Leave a comment

Deep Summer Checkpoint

Posted on July 25, 2012 by PB Rippey

Two summers ago I wrote: I create escape beneath my yard’s wind- bent gazebo, books on spread gingham, the shrunk house I dragged into our shade, ticking stove, stranger’s voice in the toy wall phone he refuses. Create with a … Continue reading →

Posted in Children's Books, Fiction, middle grade, Poetry, Writer quotes, Writing | Tagged 2012, children's literature, domestic bliss, E.B. White, fiction, fiction writing, Joyce Carol Oates, Ken Follet, palominos, poetry, preschoolers, quotes on writing, revision, toddlers, writing | 1 Comment

Quote For The Weekend (Heatwave Edition)

Posted on July 21, 2012 by PB Rippey

Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good? Such thinking, in the words of … Continue reading →

Posted in books, Fiction, Writer quotes, Writing | Tagged 2012, Author quotes, heatwaves, life, Paul Shepard, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, writing | 2 Comments

Deadwhat?

Posted on July 16, 2012 by PB Rippey

Deadlines, deadlines, self-imposed deadlines. Sometimes, while the boy attends summer camp, I sit in a small boat in the silly above ground swimming pool and deadline-away. Floating, bumping into pool sides and ladder and capsized toy boats titillates the creative side of … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Club, books, Children's Books, Fiction, ocean related, To Explain, Writer's Angst, Writing, Writing Progress | Tagged 2012, children's literature, Coral Reefs, fiction, fiction writing, Jason Chin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, ocean, personal goals, preschoolers, Rachel Carson, writer's angst, writing | 2 Comments

Not San Diego (Luckily)

Posted on July 5, 2012 by PB Rippey

Posted in Children's Books, Poetry, Writing, Writing Progress | Tagged 2012, 4th of July, kettle corn, preschoolers, San Diego fireworks, Warner Center fireworks | 4 Comments

Quote For The Weekend (N.E. Edition)

Posted on July 1, 2012 by PB Rippey

I don’t have much of a routine. I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don’t do anything. … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | 2 Comments

Askew In The Valley

Posted on June 26, 2012 by PB Rippey

My poem is out in Askew Poetry Journal’s Issue #12 Spring/Summer 2012 (here’s the link to Askew in case you’re interested in submitting or subscribing). They also have a Facebook page with samples of poetry from this issue. Dorothea Grossman’s poems are a delight … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Quotes, Writing, Writing Publications | Tagged 2012, Askew Poetry Journal, Dorothea Grossman, Holly Prado, poetry, sonnets, writing | 2 Comments